The Saltimbanques.

by Terry Dowling.

FOR DANNY TRUSWELL, HIS WORLD CHANGED FOREVER that day in 1962 exactly one week before he turned fourteen, a hot dusty day in Reardon, one of those blistering Australian summer days just after Christmas when the air s.h.i.+mmers into haze in every direction and the trees hang and it seems no-one is out on the streets. He followed his usual summer holiday routine, got his ch.o.r.es done early, then planned ways to lie low till about 4 pm when the sun was far enough down the sky for life to ease back towards normal.

'Normal' was hardly the right term with Danny's Dad taking a rig across the top of Australia and not due back for six days, and his Mum away in Dubbo visiting a sick sister. Danny was having his meals with Kenny's folks and sleeping over.

'Lying low' was hardly the right term either, for Danny and Kenny (and sometimes Annie), like most other kids, rarely managed to do the sensible thing. It was summer holidays, after all. And Danny liked to think they had something of an advantage over the others. They had the chart.

When you saw Reardon from the air with its dozen streets and eighty or so houses (population 434), its two pubs, two churches, community hall, school and library, the co-op up by the railhead near the railway station, the sheds and silos, the clumps of trees following a creek pretty well dry for a half of any year, it looked like so many cl.u.s.tered flecks of grey and silver set in a large, mottled, red tile, with a splotchy line of dullest green winding across it (the creek with its eucalypts) and a thinner silver hairline dividing the top third (the railway line).

That was the view framed on the office wall of Hendist's Stock and Station Agents. An even larger version, two yards on a side, hung over the saloon bar of the Stockman Hotel, the red sweeping out as if Reardon was a colony on the planet Mars. But a third such aerial shot, left over from the same 1956 International Geophysical Year shoot, tattered, faded and almost forgotten, was pinned to the wall of a deserted shed at the back of the Woke property, and that's where Kenny Woke, Danny Truswell and 'Sometimes' Annie Hendist had their clubhouse and planned which properties to visit, which parts of the creek to try. It gave them an overview, a sense of the town as finite and just a a place on the land, not place on the land, not the the place. Horizontal vistas somehow locked you in too much, were too real, too irresistible to allow that other kind of perspective. The Reardon Rangers, as they called themselves, were lucky. There'd been six of them in the group originally, but Cathy's folks had moved the family down to Dubbo, and Billy Mack and Keith Spicer, just a year before, had gotten too grown up, they reckoned, for that sort of clubhouse stuff. place. Horizontal vistas somehow locked you in too much, were too real, too irresistible to allow that other kind of perspective. The Reardon Rangers, as they called themselves, were lucky. There'd been six of them in the group originally, but Cathy's folks had moved the family down to Dubbo, and Billy Mack and Keith Spicer, just a year before, had gotten too grown up, they reckoned, for that sort of clubhouse stuff.

Annie Hendist, curiously, had stayed around though. She was already fourteen, a long-legged brunette, disturbingly female, and while her mind often seemed on other things, she'd surprise the boys by dropping in and tagging along just as it used to be. Sometimes it'd be for cricket or soccer with other kids, sometimes on one of their Ranger expeditions.

That was how it came to be three not two on that momentous Thursday. The boys were so glad to see her again (awkward as well, they were at that that age) when she appeared in the doorway in her shorts, striped tee-s.h.i.+rt and old sandshoes. She looked so grown-up and knowing that they made it her turn, let her point to a destination on their aerial 'chart'. age) when she appeared in the doorway in her shorts, striped tee-s.h.i.+rt and old sandshoes. She looked so grown-up and knowing that they made it her turn, let her point to a destination on their aerial 'chart'.

Barrack Creek. Dusty and dry until five weeks after the rains in the north, when with all the impact of a miracle, it flooded just like that. But mostly dry and dead, just seeming cool because of the river gums and occasional sc.r.a.ppy willows, because there was shade that wasn't made by blazing, overheated iron and canvas and old boards. She pointed to a spot close to where the creek, the train tracks and the dirt highway almost came together, creek and road curving in and curving away again, the tracks dividing them.

"How about there?" she said in that calculatedly artless way that had Danny and Kenny swapping looks.

"Roger that," Kenny said, as he so often did, a misuse of old World War 2 lingo. Danny grabbed his Dad's army surplus canteen. "Fine with me."

If it had just been the two of them, Danny and Kenny would've been laughing and joking, pus.h.i.+ng and shoving, saying goofy things, making a big deal of it. With Annie along they kept it simple, sensing that there was something fragile, special and fleeting in Annie being there. You couldn't talk it, could barely even grasp what it was, but they all knew, which had made Mr Jarvie's words at school for the past two years so much more thrilling and embarra.s.sing.

"Here's Kenny and Danny. Now where is Annie?" Mr Jarvie would say. And when Dan retorted (fairly he'd thought) that Annie was only with them sometimes, that naturally became part of the refrain. "Here's Kenny and Danny and Sometimes Annie,"

he'd say when they came in, which had the other kids sn.i.g.g.e.ring and sing-songing it too. Kids can be cruel, but how often their cues came from adults enjoying a different kind of humour.

Sometimes Annie it was from then on. In fact Kenny even said, "Roger that!" the very first day, because he figured everyone had to have a nickname.

They were a good mile from town when they realised they probably should've picked somewhere closer. The heat was relentless. The land s.h.i.+mmered in every direction; the railway tracks blazed up at the sun as if just freshly poured and still molten; the highway stretched off into the burring of haze, a crusty deserted ribbon. The trees along Barrack Creek danced as if they might vanish at any moment.

When they finally did reach the bank, they found the scant shade barely helped. Leaning against the trunks of the larger river gums, they looked out at the flat stretch of creek-bed, rippling with heat, set with the s.h.i.+fting, black and grey shapes of old tree trunks left by past flash-flooding, set to the mindless sawing of insects, then began moving along to where the trees were thickest. That's when they saw that someone had set up camp right near the creek. Three drab buses were parked under the thickest stand of river gums, all with roof-racks packed high with bundles and boxes lashed down every which way. No cars were visible, just three old buses, one with its dusty windows catching bits of sun, the second with the windows of the back half painted over, the third all riveted metal with no windows at all that they could tell, just the front windscreen glinting dully.

"Who's that, y'reckon?" Kenny asked, and got no answer. It was so quiet that his words seemed way too loud. Danny and Annie didn't want to speak. They moved closer, edging along the opposite side to the visitors, slipping from tree to tree.

No-one was about. The buses had to be like ovens inside, especially the third one, but Danny couldn't see anyone lying underneath them or leaning against tree trunks. The occupants were in town or off somewhere else, visiting one of the properties maybe. Inside Inside only if they were crazy. only if they were crazy.

There wasn't a lot of mystery in Reardon, so sometimes you made it up. You told other kids stories about the bunyip that lived in Barrack Creek (you knew someone who knew someone who'd actually seen seen it), or the 'bore' woman who appeared around the clanking windmills and poisoned the water and sometimes stole children to drown in one of the artesian dams, or the it), or the 'bore' woman who appeared around the clanking windmills and poisoned the water and sometimes stole children to drown in one of the artesian dams, or the min-min min-min lights you saw flickering over the railway tracks after midnight, sometimes dancing along the creek. But this was the real thing, a real mystery, nothing like the box Mr Jarvie had put on his desk and asked them to write about, what it might contain. Here were three genuine 'mystery boxes', made only more mysterious by the faded letters Danny could make out on the sides of at least two of the vehicles. lights you saw flickering over the railway tracks after midnight, sometimes dancing along the creek. But this was the real thing, a real mystery, nothing like the box Mr Jarvie had put on his desk and asked them to write about, what it might contain. Here were three genuine 'mystery boxes', made only more mysterious by the faded letters Danny could make out on the sides of at least two of the vehicles.

"There are words," he said.

Kenny agreed. "Roger that."

Annie turned on him. "Enough of the 'Roger that', will you, Kenny?"

Kenny blinked at her. "Roger. Right. But there are are words. Can you read 'em?" words. Can you read 'em?"

None of them could. The buses were angled wrong and too dusty. They discussed moving closer, trying to make out what the words said, but even sneaking out to hide behind one of the bigger logs left by past floodwater still meant crossing the creek-bed in plain view, and, though they didn't say it, none of them wanted to do that right then. It was just so quiet, so eerie, with insects sawing away in the sc.r.a.ps of gra.s.s, the tides of heat rolling along the creek and those dark windows glinting. If only there was movement, someone visible, maybe a dog about. But it was all heat s.h.i.+mmer and unexpected strangeness.

"Know what?" Kenny said. "We oughta come back later an' spy on 'em. What d'you say? Come back after tea?"

Dan and Annie agreed to it, then all gladly turned and headed back towards the s.h.i.+mmering spill of dirty quicksilver that was Reardon.

It took no effort for Kenny to get his Mum to serve them all an early tea. Monday's leftovers made it easy. The three of them were back at the clubhouse soon after six, killing time till it got darker by testing their flashlights and locating the little caravan of buses on the chart.

"Right here, I reckon," Danny said.

Kenny leant in close. "Roger that. Er, sorry, Annie."

"It's okay, Ken," Annie said, leaning in to see as well, which had Dan suddenly, totally aware of her, of her dark hair and how much her skin smelled of heat and summer. He could've gone crazy on it right then, but just kept pointing at the map, trying to ignore her arm pressing on his, most of all the alarming stirring in his loins, suddenly there, determined not to goof off like Kenny did whenever Annie Hendist came too close. He wanted her to like him. He liked her being close. Then, when the air had cooled by twenty degrees and the sky was a rich, deepening blue, with stars pus.h.i.+ng through and a sc.r.a.p of a moon showing, they set off again, striking out pretty well in a straight line to where they figured the camp ought to be. This time there were people. The kids smelled the smoke from a cookfire and heard voices well before they could make out the welcoming flicker of the fire itself and see the cheery, calmer points of hurricane lanterns. There were tents set up now too, two of them, large and square, and four people at least, then five, laughing and joking just like people anywhere. Six, Dan counted, when someone else stepped from one of the buses: four men, two women.

Without discussing it, Annie moved down onto the creek. The boys followed, moved out to halfway where she was hiding behind an old log and hunkered down next to her. In a whisper, Annie spelt out the words on the side of the bus nearest the fire. "S-AL-T-I-M-B-A-N - now what's that? Oh yeah - Q-U-E-S. There's a 'The'. The Saltimbanques, it seems like."

"The Salt in Banks?" Danny said, even as Kenny spoke too.

"Salting Banks? What's that?"

"The name of our carnival," a man's voice answered, right near them. Kenny yipped in fright. Danny's heart caught in his throat. Someone was there on the creek-bed close by.

"It's French," the voice continued. "I'm Berty Green. Why don't you come over an'

say h.e.l.lo?"

The fire, the lanterns, the fact that there were two women, more importantly that Berty, whoever he was, had started walking on ahead, made it seem okay. They were just carny folk camping along the road, tired from driving in the heat.

"Let's go," Kenny said.

Dan and Annie exchanged a half-seen glittering glance, and the three of them followed Berty up into the camp.

Framed above and around by flickering tree-forms in the firelight, warmly lit by yellow lamplight and walled in by the sides of one bus and one of the tents, to Dan it was like walking onto the stage of the Community Hall back in town to do a play, or peering through the eye-hole of a diorama at some painting by that guy Mr Jarvie liked, Breughal. Updated, sure. Australianised, yes, but just odd and interesting people caught in the middle of being easy among themselves. Yet not altogether his his people. And there was Berty, fully visible now and quite a sight himself, a short dustylooking man with a sharp face, his chin and forehead pulling back from his nose like some cartoon figure who'd stood too long in a scorching westerly. But there was hardly time to take it all in properly because Berty Green was introducing them. people. And there was Berty, fully visible now and quite a sight himself, a short dustylooking man with a sharp face, his chin and forehead pulling back from his nose like some cartoon figure who'd stood too long in a scorching westerly. But there was hardly time to take it all in properly because Berty Green was introducing them.

"Some kids from town dropped by to pay their respects. Don't reckon I caught your names, kids."

"Danny."

"Kenny."

"Annie."

Berty gave a deep bow, then gestured at his companions. "Right you are. And here we have Jeffrey, Gwen, Walter, Haunted Jack, May and Robert."

There were nods, smiles, salutes, quick looks at the boys, longer looks at Annie from all of them, not just the men. Danny couldn't be sure who was who, but it didn't seem important just then.

"Take a seat! Take a seat!" Berty cried. "Gwen, pour our guests some tea, will you?

Later we'll take you in to see Mr Ha.s.so."

"Mr who?" Kenny asked.

Berty grinned. "Mr Ha.s.so. Our ringmaster, our maitre'd. The boss. He's been shut away all day doin' his calculations."

"All day?" Danny said. "Not in the bus without windows?"

"Oh, not in there," Berty answered. "That's our darkwagon. We only go in there on special occasions. His office is in the back o' that one." He pointed to the one with the closed off back half. The painted-over panes glowed with dim yellow light.

"All day?" Kenny echoed. "He would've fried to a crisp in there today."

Berty laughed. "You'n me maybe. Not our Mr Ha.s.so. He's a bit of a lizard that way. Likes it warm."

Gwen handed them tin cups of steaming billy tea, sweetened with condensed milk, stirred with a eucalypt twig.

"What are Saltimbanques?" Annie asked, blowing and sipping.

"That depends," Berty replied. "Going traditional now, we're showfolk, mountebanks, jugglers, acrobats, harlequins, ballerinas and buffoons."

"Clowns?" Kenny asked, missing some of the words.

"Inevitably, Kenny," Berty said. "Ask any juggler who drops his b.a.l.l.s."

"Or any ballerina past the point of doing point," one of the others said, laughing. Walter, Danny thought it was.

"We're all just clowns if the figures aren't right," Gwen said, sitting by the fire again.

"How's the tea?"

"Great."

"Beaut."

"Terrific, thank you."

Berty got up. "How 'bout you set your cups down awhile and we'll pay a call on Mr Ha.s.so?"

Danny was glad to, if only to get away from the indulgent gaze of the others around the fire. He didn't much like adults having jokes at his expense. Mr Jarvie was bad enough.

Berty led them between the tents towards the middle bus. There was only the dull yellow glow from the back section, but Berty switched on a front cabin light as they climbed in, illuminating bench seats, a fixed table, some fitted cupboards. A door in the wall halfway down its length had a plaque with the name Bernard Ha.s.so Bernard Ha.s.so on it. on it.

"There. Let's see if he's taking visitors." And Berty winked at them as if they knew a lot more about Bernard Ha.s.so's ways than they let on. He knocked lightly at the door. "Mr Ha.s.so? We've some young visitors from town come callin'."

There was no reply that Danny could hear, but Berty smiled at them and turned the handle, opening the door on an office that took up the whole back half of the bus. There were bookshelves and charts along the walls, all aglow in the light of two parafin lamps, and a big desk at the far end littered with papers, maps, lists of calculations. Bernard Ha.s.so sat grinning at them with a pen in his hand, a large blacksmith of a man in a grimy sweat-stained s.h.i.+rt and dark pants. Where Berty Green had sharp features, Bernard Ha.s.so had craggy ones, his eyes set deep under heavy black brows and above a full black mustache. It was as if a gypsy and lion-tamer had been blended with one of those dark mysterious Egyptians from either version of TheMummy TheMummy -the 1932 original or the recent 1959 remake Hank Burgess had shown as a midnight double at the Lyceum in town only a month back (surely one of the weirdest choices for a double-feature ever). The smile was amiable enough, but his eyes glittered approvingly at Annie in a way Danny didn't like, the same way the others had looked at her, all except Berty. Hanging on the plywood wall behind the man's chair was a framed picture - a painting of circus figures caught while performing or rehearsing. -the 1932 original or the recent 1959 remake Hank Burgess had shown as a midnight double at the Lyceum in town only a month back (surely one of the weirdest choices for a double-feature ever). The smile was amiable enough, but his eyes glittered approvingly at Annie in a way Danny didn't like, the same way the others had looked at her, all except Berty. Hanging on the plywood wall behind the man's chair was a framed picture - a painting of circus figures caught while performing or rehearsing.

"So, kids. What's the verdict? What d'you think of us so far?"

"We haven't seen much yet, Mr Ha.s.so," Kenny said, eager as a puppy. Bernard Ha.s.so nodded and set down his pen. "Not much to see yet, I'm afraid. "We don't play many towns during the summer."

"Don't see any animals," Kenny rattled on, clearly on automatic.

"Oh, animals come and go. We don't go in for animal acts too much. Not too much."

And Berty Green sn.i.g.g.e.red.

"You're Saltimbanques," Annie said, as if identifying a rare breed.

"Why yes, Miss - er?"

"Annie. This is Kenny and Danny."

"Miss Annie, yes." He gave glancing nods at the boys, turned his deep-set, black eyes on her again. "That's exactly what we are. Not your usual troupe of wandering players certainly. Saltimbanques every one!" He indicated the framed print on the wall behindhim. "Pica.s.so, 1905. Family of Saltimbanques. Family of Saltimbanques. From his pink or rose period. The name is from the Italian From his pink or rose period. The name is from the Italian saltimbanco saltimbanco - coined in 1646 from - coined in 1646 from saltare saltare, to leap, in in, on, banco banco, bench. Leap-on-benches, yessir. Mountebanks, yes, charlatans and quacksalvers - another marvellous word - from the Dutch kwakzalver. kwakzalver. Ignorant pretenders. Quacks. That's us." Ignorant pretenders. Quacks. That's us."

"Do you do magic?" Kenny asked.

Berty Green sn.i.g.g.e.red again and sat on a bench seat near the door.

"Why yes, Master Kenny. Sometimes we do." Bernard Ha.s.so patted the papers on his desk. "When the planets are right and the wind blows a certain way. Sometimes it just flows out of the land. Real magic, yessir. A fickle thing though sometimes, just like the favours of pretty young ladies."

"You sure made yourselves disappear today," Annie said, with more pluck, Dan thought, than this Mr Ha.s.so expected. There was something going on that Dan didn't entirely understand.

Bernard Ha.s.so frowned, even as his eyes widened and his big smile came back. "Ah, Berty, hear that? Our young friends called earlier. We were remiss."

"Couldn't see anyone," Dan said, feeling both annoyed yet curious. Something was was going on. Adult stuff, but not like with Mr Jarvie. going on. Adult stuff, but not like with Mr Jarvie.

The ringmaster nodded. "Off getting supplies probably."

"Sometimes there's a bunyip here in Barrack Creek," Kenny said, determined not to be left out.

"That so, Master Kenny? What sort?"

"I dunno. You got bunyips?"

"Sometimes. Bunyips are easy." Bernard Ha.s.so's dark eyes twinkled and glittered under his heavy brows, and Kenny looked puzzled, as if not sure if the man were making fun of him or not.

"We should be going, Mr Ha.s.so," Annie said, and it struck Dan that she needed to be the one to say it, that he had just been sort of drifting there in this stuffy, closed part of the bus while some other level of exchange had been going on. He wished he could've re-run everything they'd said, but it was too late now.

"Yeah, we should," he heard himself say, just to be out of there.

Dan wasn't really sure why he had to go back that night. A lot of it had to do with Annie, with how Mr Ha.s.so and the troupe had looked at her, with wanting to both keep her safe and impress her. It was just something he had to do. He didn't stay at Kenny's long. He told Mrs Woke that there were some ch.o.r.es he'd forgotten to get done like he'd promised but that he'd be back later, that Kenny should expect him in their front verandah sleepout as usual. At 10.12 pm he was pedalling out of town on his bike, riding without a light, using what moonlight there was, heading to where the creek and the highway bowed together, the silver tracks cutting between.